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Will you ever use any type of installer?
No
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 78%  [ 190 ]
Yes
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 21%  [ 51 ]
Total Votes : 241

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user118696
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PostPosted: Mon May 14, 2007 12:37 pm    Post subject: Re: Will you ever use the Gentoo Installer? Reply with quote

richard.scott wrote:
the resources of the developers would be better spent on the basics of Gentoo rather than any type of Installer.


Absolutely. In my opinion, the spirit of Gentoo is fading away with that installer. I admit that it may be useful for n00b but, HEY!, we've all learnt the 'hard' way didn't we? In any case though, I think that devs are also working hard on the 'basics of Gentoo'. Great people. Thanks.
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richard.scott
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PostPosted: Mon May 14, 2007 12:51 pm    Post subject: Re: Will you ever use the Gentoo Installer? Reply with quote

pascal.bolduc wrote:
Absolutely. In my opinion, the spirit of Gentoo is fading away with that installer. I admit that it may be useful for n00b but, HEY!, we've all learnt the 'hard' way didn't we? In any case though, I think that devs are also working hard on the 'basics of Gentoo'. Great people. Thanks.


Yes, your totally right there!, both with the hard work the current Dev's put into Gentoo and the fact that it didn't harm us having to RTFM every now and then! :lol:
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PostPosted: Mon May 14, 2007 2:21 pm    Post subject: Use of Installer Reply with quote

Strange but Sabayon which is based on Gentoo has an installer which works great. It took me about 15 minutes to get a working system and be ready to run the emerge --sync and layman -S. From that point then all the tools of Gentoo are available. I think if the Gentoo developers had a talk with the Sabayon developers and followed their lead in installers, then those of us who are noobies to Gentoo would be more likely to use Gentoo.

Once you have the system downloaded, then you can do all the tailoring of the system you want. That would be a win-win situation for the beginners and we could then start to really learn what the system is all about. The installer that Gentoo provided is just too buggy to use. Using it is a crap shoot - emphasis on crap. :idea: :idea:
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NeddySeagoon
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PostPosted: Mon May 14, 2007 2:33 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

rhomp2002,

Sabayon uses the Red Hat Anaconda installer.
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jonnevers
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PostPosted: Mon May 14, 2007 2:37 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I vote 'No'.

I tried the old GUI installer and it left a very bad taste in my mouth, so much so that I wouldn't bother giving any future version a try without something prodding me into doing so. It was mainly the lack of filesystems outside of ext* that bothered me... eh.

Personally, I'd rather see a rudimentary {official} front end for portage.. or a cleaning up of portage rather then time spent on a GUI installer.

or better yet, time spent on fixing the broken way portage displays masked packages at emerge time (yes, I maintain my own patch to show all masks not just the first one hit). different prioritizes though, I suppose.

I mean out of all the tasks in Gentoo that require manual work, installation is the LAST of my concerns.
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rhomp2002
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PostPosted: Mon May 14, 2007 2:51 pm    Post subject: Re: Sabayon installer Reply with quote

Whatever installer Sabayon uses it works great and is very easy to get working.

My point is that once you have it working, then you have a base to work from to do whatever you want. You can trim down the system, eliminate all the useless crap, and you have the whole of the Gentoo sources available to you. Definitely a win/win in my book.

Then if you want once you have all your ducks lined up you can redo the install from scratch the old Gentoo way and have it all.
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Genone
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PostPosted: Mon May 14, 2007 3:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Maybe I'll try it again if it actually works for my setup (still too buggy atm when you want to change certain settings)
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PostPosted: Mon May 14, 2007 5:21 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

No. I like the manual install, because it's pretty straight-forward.
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madisonicus
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PostPosted: Mon May 14, 2007 6:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

NeddySeagoon wrote:
Looking back over my years with Gentoo, I would say that the GUI installer robs users of a valuable learning experiance. The stage installs are more than a Gentoo rite of passage, they teach you how to maintain your system too.
++

My greatest worry with an installer is that when folks see one they imagine that Gentoo is something other than what it is: and command-line-intensive, source-based, highly-customizable (and therefore fundamentally minimalist), meta-distribution. There are profound differences between Gentoo and just about every other major distribution. Those differences are there for good reasons, and I've certainly grown to appreciate them. But folks see a LiveCD/DVD with an installer, and they think they can do Gentoo like they did SUSE or something.

Arguably another major problem with the LiveCD/DVD with installer is that virtually every review of Gentoo since 2006.1 has focused on it instead of the distribution itself. Since they're reviewing the specialized, beta (alpha?) installer, reviews have been undeservedly brutal. My Gentoo installations are annoyingly stable (I like the troubleshooting), and I can do a manual installation with one hand tied behind my back. But none of that makes it to the broader linux community because all the verbiage goes to the installer.

Finally, if Gentoo is going to have an installer, there have to be better tools/logs to troubleshoot it. One of the glories of portage to me is that it almost always tells me what went wrong. The installers are blissfully feedback-free. So, when an inexperienced newbie arrives on the forums to plead for help, there's virtually nothing the community can do to help.

Nothing is more frustrating to me than trying to help out someone using the installer, because I have no idea what it was doing when the problem occurred (assuming I can even find out what the problem is). So, much to the chagrin of everyone involved, most such discussions end with the newbie getting completely frustrated, giving up, and leaving Gentoo (or worse Linux) behind.

My $0.02.

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NaiL
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PostPosted: Mon May 14, 2007 6:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I don't like expressions like "by hand" or "manually" referring to a command line installation, it seems to be a difficult task, but it is done by the same simple steps as in a visual environment.

My vote is NO.
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Clete2
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PostPosted: Mon May 14, 2007 7:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I tried the installer just for the sake of trying it. It failed at building the kernel. I wouldn't use it seriously, though. I like the idea of doing it manually. :)
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PostPosted: Mon May 14, 2007 7:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

richard.scott -

I think I have seen that before. Not really what I am after though.
What I want is to save my system "configuration" (ie world file minus packages that you emerge as part of a normal install),
config files (stuff in /etc that is not the same as what install puts in, or maybe just all of /etc), and "backup" data (my scripts, /home & /root, etc).
I don't want to restore binaries if, for example, I am moving from x86 to amd64..

[Edit, a few line breaks added by NeddySeagoon to avoid L-R scrolling]
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PostPosted: Mon May 14, 2007 8:36 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Over my dead body!
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PostPosted: Mon May 14, 2007 9:05 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Still I'm not convinced. I understand NeddySeagon behave that cli install would
teach something to users, but still I don't think that those would be the best things
to teach to users. I mean, are just "mechanical" commands that could be performed
from a gui without losing too much, what most users should learn would be to
read and write ebuilds, how portage works, how to use commands such as
patch,grep and sed, how and when to write bugreports.

And sadly almost nothing of that is learnt from installing through the cli, the
only valuable lesson in there is to read documentation, but is that one
is learnt in the install phase only by a 10-15% of the users ....


How to dig through docs and bugreports:
Code:

Konqueror-> Settings-> Web Shortcuts:

Gentoowiki - gw
http://gentoo-wiki.com/Special:Search?search=\{@}&go=Go

Firefox-> bookmarks-> bookmark managment-> quick search:

Gentoowiki - gw
http://gentoo-wiki.com/Special:Search?search=%s&go=Go

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Last edited by Matteo Azzali on Tue May 15, 2007 7:45 am; edited 5 times in total
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jonnevers
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PostPosted: Mon May 14, 2007 9:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

why would a user bother to learn how to create an ebuild in this situation? there should be a GUI to create the ebuild for them.
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PostPosted: Mon May 14, 2007 9:17 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

jonnevers wrote:
why would a user bother to learn how to create an ebuild in this situation? there should be a GUI to create the ebuild for them.

It's not something mechanical, it's not something that is done in the same way 100% of the times, to write
ebuilds peoples need to turn on their brain, following a doc step by step isn't enough most of the times....

Also learning some "portage managment from the cli" is about useless for the community, instead if users
learn writing ebuilds/programming (in bash or in other languages) they're just one or two steps from starting to develop....
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NeddySeagoon
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PostPosted: Mon May 14, 2007 9:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Matteo Azzali,

Most users will never write an ebuild, nor have the motivation to do so, any more than binary distro users would download a tarball and run the
Code:
./configure
make
make install
cycle for a package they needed.

However, many would be Gentoo users come to Gentoo having never used a CLI in their lives.
The GUI installer installs gentoo for them but how do they then maintain it ?
There are no suitable GUI maintainace tools I'm aware of.

Such users stand to loose far more practicing on a working used install, (with their precious unbacked up data) than on a blank box they are installing.
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user118696
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PostPosted: Tue May 15, 2007 12:07 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

NeddySeagoon wrote:
The GUI installer installs gentoo for them but how do they then maintain it ?
There are no suitable GUI maintainace tools I'm aware of.


I agree. We should not neglect the learning process at hand when installing even though all commands CAN effectively be automated by a GUI or some other script. I think people going through the standard Gentoo handbook get out of it with a greater feel for what is there system and what it can do.
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concord
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PostPosted: Tue May 15, 2007 5:03 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

should be stage1 only.
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Matteo Azzali
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PostPosted: Tue May 15, 2007 7:20 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

NeddySeagoon wrote:

However, many would be Gentoo users come to Gentoo having never used a CLI in their lives.
The GUI installer installs gentoo for them but how do they then maintain it ?
There are no suitable GUI maintainace tools I'm aware of.


ehr..... is the CLI still so invaluable? If you don't program in bash, you can do as ubuntu and other
easy-distro users (ok, they have adept and we have kuroo as GUI) and forget about the CLI,
or at least use it not really often.

It would be different if you start to learn bash, but elsewhere I don't see why users should be forced to
learn the CLI and use it to maintain the distro..... is not really needed, doesn't helps the community,
doesn't make the world a better place to live on...
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Last edited by Matteo Azzali on Tue May 15, 2007 7:46 am; edited 2 times in total
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PostPosted: Tue May 15, 2007 7:23 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

concord wrote:
should be stage1 only.


What about stage0? Real men just turn-on their computers and then start programming their OS in
machine-code without any help or any pre-programmed tarball,anything more is for little pussies :twisted:
(but I really feel that if we had less people convinced to be the "elite of computing" for having installed through
the cli and more people that "learnt the netiquette and when-and-how is right stress the developers,
make a bugreport, insist on a bug" the community would benefit.....)
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PostPosted: Tue May 15, 2007 1:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

My vote is "yes".

Well, my daughter (15 yo) tries to use Linux for her own personal use (even they have all windows machines at school and you can imagine she is not a guru; neither am I). And one of my friends recommended Gentoo as a way to go (we have been using SuSE at home). We used LiveDVD installer. We tried it and our experience is a little bit bumpy.
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jonnevers
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PostPosted: Tue May 15, 2007 2:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Matteo Azzali wrote:
but elsewhere I don't see why users should be forced to
learn the CLI and use it to maintain the distro..... is not really needed, doesn't helps the community,
doesn't make the world a better place to live on...

but.. uhm? in Gentoo a person *needs* to use the cli to maintain the system because there are no alternatives.... so what exactly are you arguing?

Making Gentoo more like Ubuntu is NOT making the world a better place.

If Gentoo has a GUI installer it has to meet a very high level of expectation, which the first version failed miserably at. I had a pre-partitioned HDD that I wanted to reinstall Gentoo (going from x86 to x86_64) on but because the / partition was reiserfs and the person that coded the GUI installer thought reiserfs support it in was unneeded... I couldn't even use the tool. That is making the world better? I'm really confused....

and I'll repeat what I said earlier. oh ALL the things in Gentoo that require manual work, the installation routine is the absolute LAST of my concerns.

Even from an installation standpoint, you install once and never again... so we are making what amounts to a trivial amount of work compared to maintaining the system for years on end, easier?

that being said, having a GUI installer is just fine I just wouldn't ever advocate it's usage until it's proven to work better then the manual method.
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PostPosted: Tue May 15, 2007 4:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Matteo Azzali wrote:
Still I'm not convinced. I understand NeddySeagon behave that cli install would
teach something to users, but still I don't think that those would be the best things
to teach to users.

They get in touch with the concept of partitioning and file systems. They learn where to look (e.g. for various config-files) in case of issues. Users which maybe never have heard of CLIs so far are forced to use everyday-commands (cd, ln, ls, nano, mount,...). They may be even curios enough to learn about certain commands which are used during the installation process (what about, for example, tar).

Imo the Gentoo installation process is one heck of a good tutorial for those who have the time and patience to really get into "that linux thing". :)

I won't ever use the Gentoo installer. Partly because Gentoo usually lasts a whole computer-lifetime (which is infinite in my case, being upgraded on an evolutionary basis), partly because it's just not the real McCoy. :D
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PostPosted: Tue May 15, 2007 6:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

genstorm wrote:

They get in touch with the concept of partitioning and file systems.

I haven't tried the actual gentoo installer, but the same exact experience can be done through a GUI
like how it's done in most of the other distros.
Quote:

They learn where to look (e.g. for various config-files) in case of issues. Users which maybe never have heard of CLIs so far are forced to use everyday-commands (cd, ln, ls, nano, mount,...).

Maybe my gentoo handbook is different, but there's no cd, no ls, no ln command in there, for sure there
are no grep, no sed and no equery, and there's just a couple of "plain and simple" emerge commands.

Quote:

They may be even curios enough to learn about certain commands which are used during the installation process (what about, for example, tar).

Good example, tar is probably the most useless cli-command of the whole os together with sleep. They can be useful
if you program in bash, but tar is really outdated from various gui archive managers, even a power user may use a
linux system for years without never need to use tar from the cli....
I really don't see the point in all this love for the cli, I've read Gibson (and other stories about the console wizards) too but
still I see passage from the cli to the gui like the passage from the plain(dumb) cli to the tab completion (ok, ok, some of you
will now tell that with tab completion "is not the real McEnroe" and that real men always disable tab completion.....)
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